


Tyr and the Wolf

by cefyr



Category: Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dismemberment, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 08:14:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5532206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cefyr/pseuds/cefyr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wolf has been chained. Tyr has lost his hand. This is a story of what happens next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tyr and the Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> Written in something like Edda style, to see if I could, and because this story has been rumbling around in my head for too many years.

On the first day, Tyr did not miss his hand. He slept, and ate of Idun's apples, and he knew that it would make him heal faster, but he did not think about the hand which he had sacrificed so that the wolf would agree to be bound.

 

* * *

 

On the second day, he went out to the island called Lyngve.

"Do you miss already what you left here?" said the wolf to him.

"My hand lies where you dropped it," said Tyr. "And I have not yet found anything which I cannot do with my left hand as easily as my right." The wolf turned away at his words and spoke no more.

 

* * *

 

On the third day, he sat at the table and tried to grasp his knife with the hand he had lost in the jaws of the wolf. 

It was not easy to hold the knife in his left hand, but he did not regret the price he had paid for the safety of the Æsir.

 

* * *

 

On the fourth day, he went out to the island.

"I can smell the blood in your wound from here," said the wolf. "If you come closer, I shall bite off your other hand as well, to remind you of your betrayal."

"It is the blood on your jaws that you smell," said Tyr. "And you cannot accuse me of betrayal; my right arm shows the sign of my loyalty to the Æsir."

"Loyalty?" said the wolf. "All it shows is that your hand was worth little to them, if they were prepared to sacrifice it to bind me, when Odin himself knows that I shall be free by the time Ragnarok comes."

 

* * *

 

On the fifth day, he tried to grip his sword with the hand he had lost in the jaws of the wolf. He felt an emptiness then, but it soon passed, and he could easily grip the sword in his left hand instead.

 

* * *

 

On the sixth day, he went out to the island.

"I must be a greater danger to your Æsir than they had thought," said the wolf, "if they are not satisfied with binding me, but must guard me as well."

"It was not they who sent me here," said Tyr, but the wolf had turned his head away and did not listen to him.

 

* * *

 

On the seventh day, he went to see Frigg, who saw all that Odin did not, and who often gave advice when asked for it.

"Nobody sends me there," he said. "Nobody wishes for my presence there. I do well without my right hand; I do not miss it. So why do I go out to the island?"

"Is Nobody his name now?" said Frigg. "You called him by a different name before. And it is not your hand that you are missing."

Tyr went home, but he could not escape his thoughts.

 

* * *

 

On the eighth day, he went out to the island.

"Your hand lies where you dropped it," said the wolf. "Take it and go, so that I do not have to see you here again."

"It is not only my hand that was lost," said Tyr. "Do you not remember?"

"What is there to remember," said the wolf, "except the pain when I move and the destruction which has been meted out to me in the web of the Norns? I wait for my freedom, which is all I have left."

"The future can not be remembered before it has happened," said Tyr. "The present can not be remembered before it has happened. My friendship can be remembered."

"The god of fighting speaks of friendship," said the wolf. "Then the end is nigh. Warn your Æsir."

 

* * *

 

On the ninth day, he went out to the island.

"You were here yesterday," said the wolf. "I have nothing more to say to you."

"We fought together like brothers," said Tyr. "I was the only one whose hand you allowed as a pledge when they bound you."

"I was foolish," said the wolf. "I thought that not even you were willing to sacrifice that much. I shall not easily trust the Æsir again, and the next time we meet, it will be not as brothers but as enemies."

 

* * *

 

On the ninth day, the Æsir asked him what he talked about with the wolf on the island.

Tyr answered them:

"Mediating between men  
I have not mastered;  
hard is it to stand still,  
simpler to hit.  
Lyngve's prisoner  
is like-minded to me;  
most hard is it for him  
to lie and hope for the end."

The Æsir were silent then, knowing that it was for their sake that Tyr had sacrificed more than his hand to stop the wolf.


End file.
